Breathing
by Evil's Sidekick
Summary: Edward is a med student with a rough past and a drinking problem, and Leah is his roommate. Edward/Leah. All human, AU. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

_If shame had a face I think it would kind of look like mine  
><em>_If it had a home would it be my eyes  
><em>_Would you believe me if I said I'm tired of this?  
><em>-_Lifehouse- Sick Cycle Carousel_

**PROLOGUE**

Stumbling in at well past one in the morning, tripping on the evenly carpeted floor, and the only sign of life is the sound of his own erratic heartbeats and the roar in his ears that sounded almost familiar at times. All else is obliterated, faded into insignificance.

…_such a fucking failure…_

He staggers onto the couch and stares at his knees, attempting to refocus. The world is blurred at the edges, his home unrecognizable save for the minor details, the empty box of cereal lying inexplicably on the floor, the wires that ran along the floor like deadly vipers, and the books and CD's everywhere.

He sits, wide-eyed and cataleptic, not daring to relive the night. His fingertips are numb, his throat dry and scratchy, his knuckles white around the material of his jeans. He attempts to relax his grip, but his fingers are unwilling, continuing to squeeze the inside of his thigh with an iron grip. Maybe, if he causes himself enough pain, he will wake up and this ghastly nightmare would be over.

He waits.

Later, he realizes that he was listening. He almost could hear it, that familiar series of noises; the abrupt cessation of angry drumbeats of a stereo, the creak of the door. Footsteps padding almost silently towards him, and the voice that called him a useless fucker or anything of the sort.

He was still listening when he fell asleep as he was, the silence of the apartment forming a black hole that dragged him in, slowly, inexorably.

**PART ONE**

Sunlight. Blinding, strangling sunlight, shattering the windows.

Edward makes a small noise of frustration and re-shuts his eyes, but it's no use. The inside of his eyelids are a bloody red. The steady sledgehammer of a first-class hangover was beginning its rhythm behind his temples. His sister's doppelganger – the one who took up residence in his head- crosses her arms. _Such a fucking failure_, she says. It's a familiar accusation, a drumbeat in accompaniment of the chorus of disapproval that's been crashing against the walls of his mind the past month or so.

"Dude. Do you ever clean this place?"

His eyes snap open, panicky. It takes him the better part of thirty seconds to process what he was seeing. The angel moves so that she's no longer framed by the window frame, and the halo recedes into black hair. He's more than a little breathless.

Leah ploughs on, not waiting for a reply, and he's thankful for the small favor. "It was pristine the last time I checked. And what are you, a nuclear waste dump? What _is_ this stuff?"

He blinks. She was waving his jar of Agar curiously, and in some half-awake corner of his mind, he was pissed. He was possessive of his possessions, particularly those of a scientific bent.

Mostly, though, he needs coffee. Lots of it.

"Um." His voice is raspy, and he clears his throat. "That's, um,"

"Never mind." She stands up, placing the jar precariously near the edge of his table. "You're alright, right?"

He blinks at her some more, then attempts to pull himself together. The drunk of last night still clings hazily at his mind, making him unable to think of anything that wasn't related to caffeine (…_please_?) and possibly a couple of rounds of aspirin.

His roommate snorts. "Oh, Jesus. If your daddy could see you now."

He pushes himself into a sitting position with his elbows, grimacing slightly. He scrutinizes her critically, the look that she herself named the Lab Rat Stare.

She rolls her eyes. "Dude," she says in that voice, that particular brand of disparaging semi-amusement that is pure Leah. "I'm gorgeous, I know, but subtlety is still the in thing."

He knows. God, does he know. It's only in times like these when he's in the middle of shitfaced and sober that he thinks, _fuck_ _subtlety_ and stares to his hearts content. Other times, he has the will to resist the overpowering urge. Now, he's just a drunk slob with a seriously twisted infatuation with his beautiful roommate.

Leah shakes her head, mouth curved upwards. "Get your act together. You've got lectures, TA boy."

That serves as a cold dash of water, and he all but falls out of bed. He sprints to the bathroom, and on the way, plants a kiss on Leah's cheek. It's instinct, really, muscles straining towards a common cause.

She just rolls her eyes, but there's a faint hint of red on the spot where his lips made contact and the day looks a hell of a lot brighter.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

"Oh, fuck."

Edward's not surprised when he hears the greeting that spills out of Leah's mouth- she's always like that, like she's continuing a conversation they'd been having for a long time.

Currently, she's in skinny jeans and a black T-shirt that says I'M A BITCH 'CAUSE YOU'RE A RETARD and is reading a book, the cover bent. She flings her bag carelessly on to the couch and looks at him, a familiar blend of humor and irritation in her eyes. He thinks, dazedly, _that's what makes life worth living_.

"This book sucks ass." She complains, marking her place with a bookmark. "It's about a farm, God forbid. Fuck all vegetation kind and God save America, is all I'm sayin'. What's for dinner?"

Edward rolls his eyes, because a reply isn't required, she just comes over and peers at the oven anyway.

"That casserole?" She says, in an awed voice. "As in, your mum's legendary casserole? Jesus fuck, man, should I dress up or something?"

Edward shoves her, grinning. "Actually, I thought it would be nice if we could talk."

Her face tightens. "Talk?"

For a second, his heart seems to leap into his throat, hammering insanely. Weeks of planning, he's even timed the fucking oven right, and she was going to turn him down.

But then, Leah's face clears and she flashes him a grin. "Talking's cool with me. First let me shower, 'kay?"

"Go ahead." He says, his throat dry. She winks, tosses her book on the table and waltzes out.

He's reading her farm book by the time she comes back, and he raises his head to say that it wasn't half bad when he sees her, wet hair framing her face, in an oversized shirt she's stolen from him, and his entire vocabulary narrows down to "um."

She ignores his monosyllabic greeting and bounces on the balls of her feet when she sees the fruits of his efforts of the night. "Al_right_!" She makes a peace sign and draws out a chair. "I'm starving."

He serves, hands shaking slightly. Leah doesn't seem to notice. She keeps up a steady stream of narrative, about her day, what she said, what he said, and Edward listens but his mind inevitably runs back to the same place.

"What are you doing this Friday?" he blurts, and it's a hundred times rougher than he imagined, continents away from how it was meant to be.

She looks at him, fork raised halfway to her mouth. She sets it down, her smile dying down a little. "Depends on what you mean."

Edward bites his lower lip, horribly indecisive. "Do-do you have any plans?"

Her eyes are very serious, the deepest, questioning shade of mercury. "Not really."

"We could go out."

And there it is, on the table, and he wishes he could say that his heart is lighter from the cessation of the pressure that's been on his mind ever since he moved in, but he's still absurdly edgy, nervous. He shifts in his seat, eyes locked on hers. He realizes that it's not quite over until she accepts.

Or doesn't.

"On a date." She states.

He nods dumbly.

Then, a smile that's so dazzling it puts the sun to shame curves her mouth and she nods. "Yeah, that'd be great."

He gapes at her for a second, hardly believing it.

She smiles wider, almost laughing. "Did you want me to say no?"

She's joking, but Edward hears the insecurity in the tone just the same, and he shakes his head violently. "No. I mean, yeah. I mean, I want to-" he inhales deeply. "We should go out." He finishes, lamely.

Leah's smile comes back full force and his heart stops for a second. _She's so fucking beautiful. _"Yeah, we should."

He turns to his food, his jaw feeling like it might crack from the grin that splits it.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

"You're such-" Leah gasps, arches into him as his teeth nip at the curve of her throat, "such a-"

He doesn't wait for her to finish the sentence, just moves back up and covers her mouth with his. Her fingers dig into the flesh of his shoulder, pouring acid at points of contact. His hands dance under her shirt, slips under the waistband of her jeans.

He inhales a moan, whether it's his or hers he can't tell, the edges where he ended and Leah began blurring dangerously. He licks along her tongue and she makes a sound that's new, a strangled cry.

They come together, his name moaned into the side of his neck and he's euphoric, universal.

Edward can't stop smiling all the way to the party, constantly darting glances at her, obsessed by the hypnotic quality of her every action. She retaliates with the familiar tilt of her head, half-questioning, the single corner of her mouth curved up.

He rarely is able to rip his eyes away from her mouth. It's very distracting.

But on the whole, he's happy. Like, stupidly happy, like the world was an okay place after all, and that he was in freefall and it didn't matter, and other stupid cliché stuff like that. It was a sense of contentment foreign to him that was like being shitfaced and clear-headed at the same time.

The party isn't as boring as he expected, meeting up with a few of his high school buddies he hadn't seen in a while. Almost every one of them inquires after the 'hot Pocahontas chick' and he shrugs and calls her his girlfriend. Amazing, how it just rolls off his tongue.

Leah hears him one time, and their eyes meet, silver on green, and for a second his heart hammers painfully against his ribs. Then she smiles, exasperated and amused, and the world explodes in a collision of music and light.

His sister's new boyfriend is there, he notes. He's been hearing stuff about that guy, and was planning on having a little chat. Later, he decides. Plenty of time.

He drinks much less than he usually does at this type of thing, content to sit back and insult the other attendees under his breath as Leah quietly giggled beside him.

Only a couple of girls make passes at him, and Leah gives them both a look that makes them change their mind about the bronze-haired god at the bar, and he's never been more peaceful.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

Edward Cullen doesn't do long-term. It's one of those irrefutable truths of life, like the fact that the sky is blue and the stars shine at night and that drinking excessive amounts of alcohol is a cure for every pile of shit the world throws in your way.

He used to try –_so fucking hard- _to fall in love, settle down. He was a spectacular success at the former and sucked ass at the latter. There was something, almost an individual curse, that made a longing to be free scratch under his skin every day he woke up next to the same person he did the day before.

He's blamed it on a lot of things: mainly, the way the girls he dated seemed to change for him, try too hard, become neurotic, paranoid versions of themselves where he was concerned. He knows better now: it's just him. He's just a fuckhead with commitment issues.

So it doesn't make sense why it works out so perfectly with Leah.

They've been going steady for weeks now, waking up tangled in each other, meeting up between lectures, sex on both their beds, the kitchen table, on Edward's research papers and on any other available surface and he feels a constant itch on his skin, like Leah's fingers ghosting over it the entire day even when she was away. It's strangely addictive, and even after hours of being holed up together without so much as going out for food, he's used but ready for more.

He drinks less, much less, and doesn't suffer for the lack of it and that's a miracle in itself. He even has a day or two when he doesn't need it at all, can manage without the pleasant haze that makes the small, vicious worries less potent. They've stopped scratching at his skin like this fragile, delicate, beautiful thing Leah and he share is the cure for his greatest weakness.

Leah takes every opportunity to call him a sex addict, like she's so much better and he still hasn't called her out on it.

They both still act embarrassingly like infatuated teenagers, trailing off mid-sentence to stare, spending the rest of the time fighting down the urge to turn their heads and stare some more. Edward's obsession with Leah doesn't bother him anymore, the fact that her emotions lead him through the secret map of the world becoming accepted in his subconscious.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

"-her _face!" _Leah buries her head in his shoulder and giggles helplessly again. He grins, joy shooting through his veins like bittersweet poison.

They'd come to Washington, to Edward's birthplace, and had been caught by his mother having sex on the dining table. Leah couldn't get over how close-minded his family was, _medieval, _she called it. She was like a small-scale explosion in their midst, shameless, flamboyant and like a beacon of light that drew eyes magnetically.

The Cullens were the premier family in their small town, and still had a standing in every event and Leah found it _hilarious. _She re-defined memories for him, of the place he'd dreaded and feared and loved his entire life.

Esme is shocked and offended, but Alice and Emmett take to Leah instantly. Alice and Leah don't quite hit it off –they're too different for that- but Alice sees the spark in her and appreciates it from afar. Edward's thrilled about that- Alice is the only part of his family he still gives a flying fuck about, even though it's her voice that keeps the incessant hymn in his head, like the ticking of a never-ending clock: _you're such a-_

"I'm glad we came." Leah says, softly.

Her cheeks are red from laughing, eyes alight with amusement, but her attention is fixed on him.

He nods, and tightens the arm he has around her shoulders.

"I love you, you know." She says, matter-of-factly, and his heart stops for a crucial second, fireworks clouding his vision.

He looks at her, eyes wide, and she smiles seriously.

He kisses her then, and for the time being, the sense of doom is dispelled; he is complete, mayv\be for the first time.

The thought terrifies him.

*(*)*(*(*)*(*)*(*)

Six months into the new way of the world, he freaks out.

He sidetracks from the path home on a Monday night, steps into his old bar. Just one beer, he thinks.

The atmosphere is like stepping out of a perfect, protected glass, the patrons neither content nor happy, the two things he's been telling himself he was. The air carries the raw edge of bitterness in it, and he sinks in with perfect ease.

The punch line, the absolute kicker is, he's been happy, he's been content. He's been fucking head over heels in love with the girl who shared his bed.

But the mantra that started when he was seventeen doesn't desist in his mind, not for a second: _you're such a fucking failure. _And that's how he knows. Knows that no matter what he does, it's all fall down around him and Leah will walk away. He'll become what he was meant to be – a fucking failure- once more, and for that reason he doesn't deserve to walk on air.

So he slips into his old bar stool, the bartender calls his name and he repeats his normal order and it's as if no time passed at all. After all, nothing ever really changes.

**A/N: Await Part Two…**

**Oh, and review. Because that'd be cool. **


	2. Chapter 2

It's late in the morning when he comes back, and Leah's gone.

He slumps on a couch and stares at his hands like a man with his murdered family around him might look at the bloody knife in his pocket. There is nothing perfect about this; nothing exquisitely painful, because pain of this degree is too engulfing to be comprehended.

It's only later that he realizes that Leah's belongings are still there. It's too late. He has already tasted agony.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(**)

His head is filled with clear, sharp-edged pain when the door swings open.

Leah stands in the doorway, her bag slung over her shoulder. At the sight of her, Edward jerks to his feet, relief crashing over him in waves. It's like seeing land after being tossed around on the sea for years; it's like deliverance.

"Leah, I…" he begins. His feet propel him towards her, unthinking, magnetic. Then he stops.

Leah's face bears none of the expressions he expected; no hatred, no blame. It's just blank, and for a second it feels like falling off a cliff.

Edward's insides go cold, a chilly December wind seeming to leave him frozen. For a second his mind closes up and all that comes through is the lost voice of an orphaned boy: "why aren't you mad at me? Don't you care anymore?"

The voice revolves around his head but no sound comes out of his lips. He's a statue made of self-loathing and insecurity; Leah is the pilgrim that has lost faith.

And then she's coming into the room, tossing her bag aside. She's saying, "You would not _believe_ what Jake said when he set us that paper today," and Edward stares at her, unmoving.

He feels like he's drowning.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

Things come to a remote semblance of normal and Edward wanders around, barely repressing the urge to scream till his lungs shattered.

Leah no longer meets his eye, especially not after five o'clock when the first beer comes out of the fridge. They still sleep together, and Edward always stares at her turned back at night, the words building a tide behind his throat, crashing against his mind, demanding to be spoken; the apology, the promise to do better.

But in the last minute, he always bites his tongue. A new voice has joined Alice's chorus in his head, that of Leah's. It's not saying how disappointed she's in him; it's saying nothing at all. The silence grows each day, forming a hell that dragged him down, even as he counted Leah's breaths next to him.

And so he drinks.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

The blow falls, as it always shall.

"You've gotta give it a rest, Cullen."

Familiar haze of numbness clinging at the corners of his mind, Edward feels confused, relaxed and jubilant at the same time. It's a combination that can only be caused by copious amounts of straight tequila and would have him bent over the sink in a matter of hours. He simply doesn't have it in him to give a shit.

He focuses on Leah with difficulty. Her arms are crossed, brow furrowed and he's reminded all of a sudden of his mother and that's not something he can deal with right now, intoxicated or not.

"What?" he stumbles on the monosyllable. Shit. Drunker than he thought.

Her eyes glint of steel. "Come on, Edward. You know what." A pause. Then: "Alice called today."

"Ah, shit." He mumbles to himself.

She walks to the window, stares at the murky dark of the night. It's an awful day to be alive. "They're really counting on you." She says quietly.

Edward swears some more.

"That's it?" She finally whips around and he can see into her eyes; she's fucking _furious_. "You're blowing your trust fund and lying to your sister, insulting the memory of your father just by _existing_ and all you've got is 'Alice doesn't know jack'? The hell is _wrong_ with you?"

He looks at her stupidly. He recognizes the individual words but the meaning as a whole eludes him.

"Fuck you, Cullen," she barks, pushing roughly past him.

Then, he finally catches up with the world. He's left on an island as the ground washed away in a tide, and he realizes that if she's angry, he's outraged.

"So what you're saying is," he says, his voice hardly recognizable as his own, "that Alice and Emmett and Rose…they're all _right_, that I'm the one fucking up?"

Her shoulders square, her chin tilts upwards. Amidst his rage, his bitterness, agony swells in him. Those gestures are so familiar it hurts to look at her.

"_Of_ _course_ not." She sneers, waving an arm around his room. "Why should I, when it's so obvious you're living up to your big _legacy_, living up to your potential, getting stoned before midday. Bang up job, by the way."

He takes a step towards her. He notes, detachedly, that his hands are clenched and that he's shaking. "They shove this on me." He says, his voice laced with ice. "They compensate for losing Dad by making me a clone of him, and they don't even ask me, _hey, Edward, bro, d'you mind becoming Dad? It's not like you have anything better to do." _His voice cracks, and her eyes harden. "They get rid of their guilt of killing Dad by making me into him."

"You're so fucking pathetic." She snaps, and he staggers backwards involuntarily, eyes widening. "So Emmett nearly killing that chick shocked your father. Maybe it gave him the heart attack. But you sure as fuck don't have the right to blame Emmett, not now. You're-" she whips around, her entire form shuddering.

"What?" he snaps, cruel smile curving his lips. Listening to himself, he can almost believe he isn't terrified.

He can't see her face, but her profile is as strong as ever, back straight like a soldier's, forever and for always Daddy's little bitch.

She exhales, seeming to deflate into herself. Her head bows. "Such a fucking failure." She whispers, so quiet he barely hears her.

The blow is received with grace he didn't believe himself to have. His eyes widen slightly, his heart freezes. Time seems to stop for a second.

"I- I can't watch you do this to yourself." She continues, mumbling brokenly. "You're going to drink yourself to death and there's nothing…"

She doesn't finish her sentence, just looks over her shoulder at him. His mouth forms her name, and she flinches, the single word a slice across her heart. Her expression is one of utter devastation.

That doesn't stop her, though.

"You've got to let me go, Edward."

And she's outside, the door closing softly behind her.

And just like that, the world shatters, crumbles around him, centuries of civilization falling to its knees with him. It's the glorious crescendo of agony; it's just as he knew it would be. She's gone.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

Three weeks later, Edward gets into a fight.

It spreads through the bar like a wildfire, all the patrons instantly latching onto the feeling of pure rage he's got humming under his skin. Fists fly; stools shatter. The guy next to him –older than him, heavier than him and definitely bigger than him- crashes his fist against Edward's, and Edward hears the crunch of bone and wonders whether his features will be forever altered. Maybe then, he could escape this accursed existence, the face that, like Dorian Grey's, brought on his ultimate doom.

In hindsight, it's almost comically predictable. The air around him was in a vacuum, leaving him with empty lungs and the scratchy feel of raw destructiveness on his skin. He exists almost solely on alcohol now; showing up at classes when he wanted to, drunk, getting kicked out more often than not.

But that night, it was different. He was sober; or at least, the closest Edward Cullen could have claimed to have ever been.

He'd been coming out of lectures, which all had been filled to the brim with ominous threats of finals and Dean's lists and first uppers. He was no longer surprised at the sway his last name had over academics over the world; he was permanently wasted, late for classes, mockingly brilliant, yet he would forever be the great Carlisle Cullen's son above all.

He despised the superficiality of it.

So he was walking, faster than usual, an unseen force dragging him away from the buildings.

That's when he sees her.

He freezes, and students crash past him. He's in the middle of a waterfall, the moment precarious and shocking as the world crashed around him.

He takes a sharp left. The bar's just a few feet away and feels more than ever like a haven.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

He gets off with a warning from the Vice Chancellor and when he gets back home, Leah's there.

She doesn't say anything, offers no explanation. She just reaches up, tangles a hand in his hair, and kisses him.

His face is still raw from recently removed stitches and he's still bandaged, but it feels like heaven. He can breathe again, and it's like he can do anything, be anyone. His chest hurts.

He drinks her in, a drowning man offered air. The world seems to right itself for the sharpest of seconds and the clichés they taught you were real; the world was a good place and we could all be happy.

"You fucking asshole," she whispers against his lips as they part for air, each drawing in a deep lungful. He notes that if he looks like he's been to hell and back, she looks equally bad, dark bruise-like circles around her eyes, making her look lovelier than ever. "Take care of yourself. I love you, you know."

So matter-of-fact. He blurts it out, the first thing that he says in a long time that tastes right in his mouth: "Then come back."

He stares at her, the girl who held the world on her fingertips. Watches as her expression closed in upon itself, the shutters draw up. His heart, his almost-healed heart, begins to wither in a descent that was spontaneous because it was so familiar.

She says the single word, no frills to make it better, because she wasn't like that. The tears come freely, but not an extra word to soften the blow. "No."

And then she leaves again.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

He stares at his knuckles, red and raw, and tries to remember how that happened. It doesn't work; days, weeks and months have blurred, forming a whirlpool of time, incomprehensible and utterly alien.

He's fairly certain it's September again, maybe the twentieth. He glances at his watch for confirmation and realizes that it has stopped, much like his own life. The arms lie still, unmoving, terrified. The face of the watch tells him nothing.

The frantic swinging from thought to thought halts –_such a fucking failure-_ and once again, he's dragged into the nightmare vortex of blood and the unbearable sterility of air of his memories. The steady beeps, grating on his nerves.

His sister is there, talking, cajoling as he sits on the couch, unmoving. Emmett moves towards him, his brute force much more effective than his sister's tactics. He feels himself shepherded towards a set of familiar double doors. Occasionally, he swims back, dazed, to the surface of his mind.

Alice keeps saying that it's okay, that everyone makes mistakes, that he gave it his all, and he muses, vaguely, that she sounds like his old soccer coach after a humiliating loss. She keeps up this litany and he drowns once more in his thoughts, the ever-present noose of self-loathing tightening around his neck.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

"I was drunk," he says, and the room goes eerily silent around him.

It's the first time he's spoken in days, his voice rough and gritty around the words. Dimly, he's aware of Alice staring at him, wide-eyed, and Emmett's grip tightening dangerously around the handle of his mug of coffee.

"What do you mean, Edward?" Rose sounds artificial, fake, and he realizes in that moment how very much he hates all of them. The familiar rage of his teenage years bubbles to the surface, but he's too tired to let it simmer through.

"When I was operating." He says, fixing his gaze on the kitchen door, just left of her. "I was drunk."

More silence, which is broken by the harsh noise of glass exploding. Emmett has crushed his mug.

"Impossible." He barks, tone rough.

Edward raises his head to look at him, and his brother flinches. Edward isn't sure what's in his eyes, but it seems to be scaring all of them in equal amounts. He himself can't recognize the bleeding bullet holes on his face anymore when he looked in the mirror.

"I was having a bad day," he says, understating it to make the sting sharper. Rose looks away, out the window. "I was shitfaced, and then they called me in. She's been in an accident."

Images play in front of his eyes, the blood, the urgent voices. More blood. Blood, everywhere. "I could have saved her. I knew I could. I was convinced… it was so simple." He laughs bitterly. "I could have done it with my eyes closed, but not…"

Not when he was drunk. Not when the loneliness and silence had accumulated in him to make a bleeding black hole that was incessantly pulling him down. Not on Leah's birthday.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

"What do you see, Edward?"

"A piece of paper."

"And on it is…?"

"I know perfectly well what a fucking Rorschach test is. Don't patronize me."

"Good, good. Then perhaps you could tell me…"

"Why? So that you could tell me that I'm a chronic depressive with a touch of Asperger's? Oh, how brilliant of you. Can I go now?"

"Your session's not over yet, Dr. Cullen."

"Don't call me that!"

"And why not?"

"I won't tell you. I might cry, and though you'd enjoy that, I wouldn't."

"Do you remember the last time you were happy?"

"What does that…oh, right, you're trying to make me cry again."

"Think about it, doctor. Think about when you were last sober."

"Yesterday."

"Really? For some reason, I don't believe you."

"Fuckin' tragedy, then."

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

The idiot of a shrink was right, Edward realizes in the middle of his afternoon coffee (six parts actual coffee, the rest is whiskey he nicked off Emmett's stash)

When was he most sober? When he was with Leah.

When was he the happiest? Leah.

"So now what?" he asks the empty room.

Alice, of course.

*(*)*(*)*(*)(*)*(*)*(*)

Six months into the new way of the world, he buys Leah a watch.

She accepts it, laughing quietly and Edward is struck by the intensity with which he wanted her. The love that simmers under his skin is just waiting for the smallest crack to escape through, which is why he has to be doubly careful.

The agreement he, Leah and Alice reached is a precarious one; Leah would live with them in the intention of preventing Edward from drinking. They would keep it all terribly businesslike, bury all that was between them and figure out an arrangement that worked for the both of them.

For most part, much to his incredulity, it really was working. He was no longer wasted by two pm, and he didn't have the slightest clue how Leah managed. It's like having her around is the cure he has needed his entire life and he can't help but want more. Hope.

He could still hope.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

He stops hoping a year after that, when he meets a pretty young nurse named Bella Swan.

She works in his ward, and blushes when he speaks to her. Not terribly professional, but she's kind; you can tell by the look in her eyes.

When he first asks her out for coffee, it seems perfectly natural. She casts her eyes downward and accepts, and his heart sings in a way he thought had been silenced. He sees a future with her; chestnut-eyed children and church on Sundays. A settled, content place to call home.

Alice loves her. So does Esme.

*(*)*(*)*(*)*(*)

Leah never stops hoping. Not even when the wedding bells toll and rings exchange, she never stops.

Edward smiles at her from the altar. _Beautiful, _he mouths.

Leah's heart truly breaks then. Edward looks perfect; an angel on stained glass. _I loved you, _she thinks. _I saved you, and I never gave up. _

Leah leaves the couple to their marital bliss, Dr Edward Cullen and his beautiful bride, Bella. She could burn the houses down, she could smash her fist against mirrors. Instead, she leaves, as she always does.

She looks back just that once. It's allowed. _Still love you, _she says clearly into the night.

**-END**

**A/N: Apologies for the delay. I get distracted very easily.**

**I feel like a total asshole, but sadly, this is it. The end. No updates, no sequels, no gooey happy ending. Please try your very best not to hate me. **

**Reviews = love**


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